One desired goal of cellular network operators (which we may also refer to as “service providers” or “operators”) is to be able to provide uninterrupted services with quality and efficiency to as many mobile customers as possible. To approach this goal requires a favorable balance among customer experience and satisfaction, network performance, and costs.
One way for operators of different networks to improve performance and reduce their capital and operating costs is to share resources. That is, a given network is unlikely to use 100% of its resources 100% of the time. Therefore, there is an opportunity for different networks operating in a given geographical area to pool some of their respective resources to achieve greater overall efficiency. This can, for example, reduce the rate of outages and increase the effective network capacity and RF coverage without deploying more base stations.
However, there are still commercial and technical barriers to the achievement of large-scale resource sharing among cellular operators. Accordingly, there remains a need for methods of resource sharing that are technically and commercially feasible.